5 Reasons Your Sales Team Does NOT Have Better Leads
If you're like many businesses we talk to regularly and work with, then you have a strong, dependable, hard-working sales team that spends a lot of...
3 min read
Dean Moothart : July 12, 2017
One of the first signs that a sales organization of a small company is growing and maturing is that they no longer rely on the sales team to generate leads. In the early stages of development, a new company requires that everyone “wear multiple hats”. Consequently, the salesperson usually plays the role of Chief Marketing Officer, Marketing Campaign Manager, and Business Development Specialist. It’s quite simple really—if the salesperson doesn't generate leads, no one will. But as an organization matures, the various Sales and Marketing disciplines should be divided as soon as possible. Not doing so simply makes achieving growth objectives more challenging and makes your life tougher than it needs to be.
Unfortunately, many organizations get stuck in this first stage of organizational development, and they continue to rely on the sales team to generate their own leads. Salespeople should really never stop prospecting. They should always be on the lookout for new business opportunities. But an organization that completely relies on Sales to generate leads are putting their growth objectives at risk. Below are three primary reasons why.
The sales team should always have some role in building their own pipeline. However, relying on Sales as your primary source of leads can be risky and expensive. In order to reduce lead generation costs, Marketing should deploy tactics that can be both executed with consistent discipline and measured closely.
One tactic that accomplishes both is Inbound Marketing. Inbound Marketing is a methodology that attracts the attention of prospects using content creation. The content positions your organization as thought leaders, subject matter experts, and trusted advisors. When publishing this type of content and promoting it to the right audience, prospects will self-identify and “raise their hands”. The end result is qualified leads that are significantly less expensive than those produced by the traditional outbound leads generated by the sales team. In fact, HubSpot’s research estimates that they cost 61% less.
If your organization is growing, dedicating your marketing team to generating leads and your sales team to closing them is smart for all of the reasons above. There will always be overlap, but when Sales and Marketing are working together on their own tasks, you get a lot more for a lot less.
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